Fifty years ago today, KISS changed rock ‘n’ roll forever.
On March 15, 1976, the New York quartet released Destroyer, their fourth studio album and the record that transformed them from cult favorites into arena-conquering legends. Half a century later, Rolling Stone still ranks it among the 500 greatest albums of all time, and the fans who grew up with it couldn’t agree more.
The timing of Destroyer was everything. Three years of relentless touring and theatrical live shows had built a fanatical following, but it was the band’s 1975 live album Alive!, which spent 110 weeks on the Billboard chart and became their first gold-certified record, that finally cracked open the mainstream. Riding that momentum, KISS turned to producer Bob Ezrin, fresh off his acclaimed work with Alice Cooper, to help them make their most ambitious studio record yet.
What Ezrin brought to the sessions changed the game. Where earlier KISS albums were raw and unadorned, Destroyer layered in orchestral arrangements, piano and even a children’s choir, lending the record an almost cinematic scale. The menacing “God of Thunder” showcased Ezrin’s experimental instincts, while “Detroit Rock City” opened the album with a car-crash narrative so vivid it practically smelled like burnt rubber.
The result didn’t go over immediately. “It wasn’t initially met and embraced in the way we had hoped because it didn’t sound like Kiss Alive!” frontman Paul Stanley has said. But time has been extraordinarily kind to Destroyer. More songs from the album have appeared in KISS setlists than from any other record in their catalog; a testament to how deeply those tracks burrowed into rock consciousness.
The lineup reads like a greatest-hits collection all on its own: the thunderous “God of Thunder,” the anthemic “Shout It Out Loud” and the soft-rock ballad “Beth,” which became the band’s first top-10 single, peaking at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. Destroyer itself peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard 200 and was eventually certified double platinum by the RIAA, the first KISS album to reach that milestone.
To mark the 50th anniversary, the band is releasing two special vinyl pressings: a purple liquid-filled edition and a metallic gold and purple fire vinyl in an embossed jacket with gold ink detailing, complete with an included poster.
For a band famous for fire-breathing and platform boots, Destroyer proved KISS could also be genuine artists. Fifty years on, that still feels like the most rock ‘n’ roll thing they ever did.
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